


Rewritten

by Anonymous033



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 02:56:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4043137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous033/pseuds/Anonymous033
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And Sara—Nyssa’s Sara—is wholly trusting in the way she looks at Felicity when she asks, “Where am I?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rewritten

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Though unmentioned in the Characters tag, this fic does contain Laurel and Felicity in friendship capacities with Nyssa. All characters are meant to be presented in a non-negative light.
> 
> 2\. This fic was inspired by the Legends of Tomorrow trailer; however, as it is very marginally related to that show, it is not tagged as such.

“Who are you?”

The words send pinpricks cascading down Nyssa’s spine. She feels her throat close up, but she persists regardless and smoothens down the covers around the fragile woman in the bed, keeping her motions deliberately gentle so as to not alarm the skittish creature.

“My name is Nyssa,” she tells the woman.

Sara’s uncomprehending gaze traces her face before darting over her shoulder towards where another blonde woman stands. “Felicity,” she calls.

Nyssa thinks she has never hated Felicity Smoak, MIT Class of ’09, more than in that moment.

And it is highly ungracious of her, she knows, as Laurel and Felicity had been the ones to help her recover her deceased Beloved and bring the body to Nanda Parbat.

She whirls around, watching as Felicity cautiously approaches the bed and takes the hand Sara offers her.

“Hey, Sara,” Felicity says awkwardly.

And Sara— _Nyssa’s_ Sara—is wholly trusting in the way she looks at Felicity when she asks, “Where am I?”

“I need to attend to other matters,” Nyssa speaks up. Laurel and Felicity both cast her anxious looks, but she bites back the humiliation and continues, “You may be permitted to stay in this room for as long as Sara requires your help. If there is anything you need, please let Wafa know. She is highly knowledgeable in how to care for the ill and will do everything in her power to help you.”

\-------------------------

Nyssa has no other matters to attend to.

Having foreseen that Sara would need a lot of help during recuperation, she had made Sara her _last_ order of business rather than her _first;_ after all, if there is anything that the League has taught her, it is that patience pays off.

Except for the times when her foresight has failed her.

She cannot imagine a world where she would not remember Sara, and she could never even have _fathomed_ a world where Sara did not remember her.

She’s doubled over before she knows it, the most horrid, wretched of sobs escaping her; somewhere at the back of her mind, she realizes just how unlike a Demon’s Head she must appear to be.

Yet, she cannot bring herself to stop.

She’s lost a lover she had thought could be found.

(For the third time.)

\-------------------------

Felicity finds her alone in the alcove.

The bespectacled blonde settles beside her and uncomfortably pats a hand to her knee. “We saw the Pit do that to Thea, too,” Felicity says.

“I wouldn’t know,” Nyssa admits. “I’d never seen the Pit put to use before.”

“Really?”

“Do you think my father could have been so generous as to share the wealth of his immortality?” Nyssa questions.

“Fair point,” Felicity concedes. “She’ll remember you eventually, you know.”

Lead deposits heavily in the pit of Nyssa’s stomach. “Perhaps it is for the best if she didn’t.”

“ _What?_ ” Felicity asks; and it’s strange, Nyssa thinks, that Felicity should sound so hurt.

“When Sara left the League for the first time,” the new Demon’s Head begins, “and I found her, she told me that her soul could not take the killing anymore. I found it preposterous that she should say that—that she should imply the years we shared equated to so much less than the things we had done—but I cannot deny to have seen her reasoning. Sara has never been built to live like me. As much as I wish to lie to myself and tell myself that she will want to stay with me…. Now is the ripest opportunity for her to make a fresh start. If you travel back to Starling City with her—”

“Are you asking me not to tell her about you and the League?”

“No,” Nyssa replies evenly. “I am asking you to _ensure_ that she does not, of her own volition, recover memories of us. If suggestion is necessary—”

“ _Suggestion?_ ” Felicity snipes incredulously. “You want me to _brainwash_ her? You can’t be serious right now.”

Nyssa shoots Felicity a look. “Don’t act the martyr. You have never thought too highly of the League,” she retorts.

Felicity falls quiet then, conflict written all over her face.

Nyssa ignores the tremble in her voice as she continues, “All I’m asking for is for you to help me rewrite my Beloved a happy ending.”

\-------------------------

“Who _are_ you?”

The question does not hurt any less the second time around, but Nyssa steels herself and reaches out to wipe the damp towel across Sara’s pallid cheeks.

“Nyssa,” she repeats curtly. “I—My hands can heal.”

It’s a strange comment to make, to say the least—Nyssa knows it by the dumbfounded expression on Sara’s face—but it’s the only phrasing which wouldn’t turn her truth into a lie.

Her hands _can_ heal.

It is merely that they have only ever healed one person before.

“Why are you here?” Sara asks.

“This is my home. You are in Tibet,” Nyssa tells her succinctly. “You fell victim to a work-related accident, and your sister and colleague brought you here due to the availability of restorative agents.”

“Oh,” Sara answers bewilderedly. “What the hell do I work as?”

Nyssa takes a deep breath. “That is not up to me to say,” she replies. “But please trust that you are safe here. I—Laurel and Felicity would never let any harm come to you, and if they have allowed me to be alone in the same room as you—”

“You don’t scare me,” Sara interrupts, and Nyssa blinks owlishly at her. “That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it? That I’m all confused and amnesiac right now, so I have to be wary of you … but you don’t scare me. I don’t know why. You just don’t.”

Nyssa nods in acknowledgement. “That is reassuring.”

Sara gives her a tiny smile. “I will recover my memories someday, though, right? ‘Cause this whole blank-slate thing kinda sucks.”

“Someday,” Nyssa promises, pausing before adding, “and I choose to believe that your slate will be light and colourful when filled.”

\-------------------------

“Tell me about Tibet.”

Nyssa chuckles despite herself. “That’s what you’re going for?”

“Well—” Sara shrugs. “If we’re not gonna talk about my life, I might as well learn something else useful.”

“Fair enough,” Nyssa accedes. “Let’s see: The Tibetan Plateau remains one of the highest inhabited regions in the world. Prior to their resettlement, many Tibetans were goat-, sheep-, and yak-raising nomads.”

“Resettlement?” Sara asks curiously.

“By the Chinese government,” Nyssa clarifies. “It is a heavily disputed topic.”

“Oh.”

“ _Dri—_ yak—milk and butter feature heavily in Tibetan diet. Your favourite was butter tea.”

“My fa—I’ve been here before?”

Nyssa squeezes her eyes shut, berating herself for her slip. “Yes,” she admits.

“And I’ve met you before, too,” Sara presses on quietly; perceptively. “If you know what my favourite is, we know each other quite well.”

“We _knew_ each other quite well,” Nyssa amends with a bittersweet smile. “As we have established, I am nothing but a foreign face to you now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Nyssa whispers, and she can’t resist feathering her fingers along the structure of Sara’s jaw. “You didn’t choose this fate. Nevertheless—things happen the way they do for a reason; perhaps that is why you recognize Felicity and your sister, but not me. Don’t distress yourself over this. I am hardly worth the effort.”

“That can’t be true, Nyssa,” Sara protests, cold fingers catching hold of Nyssa’s wrist; the name as spilt from Sara’s lips sounds so intimately familiar that for a long moment, Nyssa feels robbed of air.

“We’ll see,” she replies. She stands then, shaking Sara’s fingers from her wrist and taking up the basin of warm water she had been using to clean Sara’s face. “Get some rest. I will let your sister know that I have left your room so that she may come back to keep you company.”

\-------------------------

Laurel finds her in her chambers just as she’s brushing out her hair and preparing to retire for the night.

“Felicity’s with Sara,” Laurel excuses when Nyssa arches an eyebrow in her direction. “Sara’s asleep, anyway. Um, I wanted to ask you about your crazy plan Felicity was telling me about.”

Nyssa heaves a tired sigh, recalling the colloquialism Sara had once taught her: _I_ really _can’t catch a break, can I?_ “It’s not so crazy when you consider who I am,” Nyssa tells Laurel. “You hated me when you first met me. If you had the opportunity to give your sister a life where she doesn’t know me … why shouldn’t you jump at it?”

“Because _I_ know you now,” Laurel replies. “And I know you’re not the monster everyone makes you out to be.”

Nyssa averts her eyes and bites down on her bottom lip.

“Sara thought that’s who she was, y’know,” Laurel continues. “This … irredeemable monstrosity who didn’t deserve her family. She hated herself, and that made me hate _you._ I wanted to hate you. And then you told me your story of loving her, and I realized that—however messed up all of this is? What you felt for her, it was real.”

“Of everything that I am, my love for her is the one thing that will never stop being real,” Nyssa answers. “But that is the _tritest_ of arguments I have ever heard. My personal agenda is of the least importance.”

“Little ironic,” Laurel says wryly, and Nyssa breathes out a shaky laugh.

“Swearing a blood oath over a dead woman is surely different from handing a life sentence to a resurrected one. I didn’t bring her back only for her to subjugate herself to me.”

“Then, don’t ask that of her. Don’t ask her to return to the League. Just—that doesn’t mean she has to forget _you._ ”

“And how would I distinguish the two?”

“The same way you did with me,” Laurel answers simply.

\-------------------------

Sara’s smile, when Nyssa arrives the next morning with breakfast, fills Nyssa’s stomach with butterflies. Nyssa doesn’t know what she’s done to deserve that radiant a greeting, but she won’t complain; setting the tray down next to the bed, she picks up the palm-sized bowl and holds it out towards Sara.

“Sit up,” she commands. “If my estimations are correct, you should have regained enough strength to feed yourself.”

Sara wrinkles her nose. “What if your estimations are wrong?” she quips, and it reminds Nyssa so strongly of the many times Sara had attempted to escape fight practice that it’s a kick to the gut.

“Then I shall feed you,” she returns pragmatically. “But my estimations are never wrong.”

“Fine,” Sara huffs, and wriggles a bit to raise herself up on the bed. Nyssa puts down the bowl to help her settle with the pillows at her back; hands her the bowl when satisfied that she is adequately balanced.

“How did you sleep?” Nyssa asks.

“Okay,” Sara replies in between sips. “You?”

“Acceptably,” Nyssa answers, but refrains from telling Sara that ‘acceptably’ simply means she woke up with nightmares fewer times than she had anticipated.

“You look exhausted, though.”

“How very flattering of you.”

Sara laughs out loud. “It wasn’t meant to _flatter,_ ” she drawls. “It just—I don’t know. I feel like you’re keeping something from me.”

“That could hardly be an astute observation, considering you have been informed that we knew each other before.”

Sara’s eyes dim as she sobers. “Why won’t you tell me?” she pushes quietly. “Was I really _that_ horrible to you befor—”

“ _No!_ ” Nyssa blurts, loud and panicked. It’s ridiculous, really, that _this_ is the question which makes her lose her composure—but _nonono Sara should never be allowed to think that._ “You have treated me better than anyone I have ever known. You were—you _are …_ an outstanding woman.”

“But _I_ scare _you._ ”

And god, Sara’s gaze feels like it’s burning Nyssa’s skin right off.

“That’s why you won’t tell me,” Sara guesses. “You don’t know how I’ll react once I find out exactly what we were.”

Sara has always been too smart for her own good.

“You terrify me,” Nyssa confesses tremulously. “But only because I was the one to hurt you gravely.”

“But if that were really the case,” Sara asks, hesitating when Nyssa flinches away from the hand she extends to Nyssa, “then why do you look like _I’m_ the one who broke your heart?”

\-------------------------

When someone manages to find her for the third time, Nyssa finally accepts that she might be losing her touch.

“S-she knows,” Felicity stutters tentatively, fidgeting. “I’m sorry. She was pretty freaked out after you bolted from her room without explanation.”

“As would undoubtedly be the logical consequence,” Nyssa rasps. “How is she taking it?”

“We actually didn’t have to tell her much. Apparently, it’s easier to bring her memories back than you’d thought it would be.”

Nyssa remains silent.

“You had to have realized it was a long shot in the first place,” Felicity continues. “I mean—not that I was on-board with you, but when I thought about it logistically…”

Nyssa is well-aware that it had been a long shot, but she had needed that tenuous hope to hold on to. (Because every time she closes her eyes—even after Sara had first agreed to return to the League—she still hears the past tense in ‘I was with you because I loved you’ and wonders if she only has enough in her to be loved for less than a single lifetime.)

“If she wishes to depart Nanda Parbat immediately, it can be arranged,” Nyssa announces.

“She’s asking for you, actually.”

Nyssa frowns. “Do you know why?”

“Presumably because you bolted from her room without explanation.”

The sassy reply is mildly irritating, but it takes away some of the tension in Nyssa.

“Very well,” Nyssa agrees. “I will be along shortly.”

\-------------------------

“I remember you,” Sara says the moment Nyssa steps into the room.

Nyssa stands just inside the doorway, uncertain if she should approach the bed; it had taken her longer than ‘shortly’ to gather her wits, in the end, but now that she’s looking at Sara again … her once-infallible courage fails her still.

Nyssa’s a mess; has been ever since she knelt on sodden earth and made a promise she could not keep to a tombstone which reflected none of Sara’s personality.

From the corner of her eye, she now sees Laurel and Felicity step by her—

The door closes behind them, and the room falls into utter stillness.

Sara already looks far more burdened than she had been a few hours ago, and Nyssa absolutely despises herself for that.

“Aren’t you gonna come here?” Sara asks softly; not unkindly.

Nyssa lifts her chin. “If you wish to leave right now, you will not be able to do so unaided, but my men—”

“ _Habibti,_ ” Sara cuts in. “Please stop speaking to me like I’m a stranger.”

Nyssa opens her mouth. Shuts it again. Opens it once more. “It’s been a year since your—death. Many things … have happened in the interim. To all intents and purposes, we are strangers.”

“So, we’re starting from scratch now?” Sara asks, her voice pained.

“Sara, do not make this any harder than it is.”

“ _You’re_ the one who wanted to pretend she didn’t know me.”

“I only wished—” Nyssa starts. “I only wished for you to be happy.”

“Nyssa, I swear to god,” Sara snarls sharply, “if you don’t come here _right now,_ I will get out of bed to _kick your ass,_ and it will not be pretty.”

Nyssa doesn’t think that it would be, given that Sara can’t even sit up unassisted yet.

But the instruction gives her impetus to move her feet, and she shuffles over to sink into the chair by the bed. Sara reaches out; captures Nyssa’s fingers.

“This is about more than my patchy memory,” she asks quietly, “isn’t it?”

“Perhaps so,” Nyssa murmurs reluctantly, and Sara squeezes her fingers in reply.

“Tell me.”

“It is simply that I was selfish to have demanded your return.” Nyssa shakes her head. “If you had not been sent after _al-Saher…._ ”

“Chances are, I would have gotten in trouble anyway,” Sara points out dryly. “That’s just my luck.”

“But I played a role in that.”

“No, _your father_ did. We both know you wanted me back not because of my superior ass-kicking abilities.”

Nyssa rolls a shoulder. “And is it not simply proof that even the best of my intentions are toxic for you?”

“ _Four years,_ ” Sara grumbles. “I spent _four years_ trying to get you to believe that you’re not inherently a bad person, and all it takes is one year without me for Ra’s to undo that.”

Nyssa laughs humourlessly. “It is easier for me to convince myself that you had deluded _yourself_ into thinking I had anything worthwhile to me.”

“And why is that?”

“All that I am—the League; my upbringing; my way of being—is the root cause of so much of your suffering. How can I look myself in the mirror at the end of the day and tell myself that you should not regret the past we shared?”

“Because _I don’t._ I regret so much, Nyssa—but not _you and me._ ”

Nyssa twists her lips.

“And I don’t need you to be noble for me,” Sara continues. “Of course I wish I hadn’t done the things I remember doing, but I _had_ done them,and there’s no point in primping me into this fresh-faced princess who’s never sinned her entire life. I’ve done _so much wrong …_ but they were my wrongs. I pay my own penances, Nyssa.”

Nyssa lowers her head, feeling the shame of Sara’s chastisement simmer in the pit of her stomach.

“Stop,” Sara says firmly. “You’re doing it again.”

Nyssa huffs and blinks away the heat searing the back of her eyelids. “Where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know,” Sara answers honestly, her tone laden with seriousness now. “But I do know this: I won’t go down the mountains pretending never to have heard of the League. I—I can’t be here anymore, but … I won’t erase my past just like that, Nyssa, like it doesn’t matter what I’ve done.”

“And us?” Nyssa asks. “Am I never to see you again?”

“I don’t know,” Sara repeats sadly. “I still love you, and I don’t want to have to choose between you and the League again, but … I think it depends on where we go from here. There’s one thing _I need you_ to know, though—no matter where we end up? You’re not a memory I would choose to erase. I will _never_ choose to forget you.”

Nyssa inhales deeply and nods. “Thank you.”

“Hey.” Sara’s free hand skims lightly across Nyssa’s cheek. Nyssa lifts her head, and Sara pats a spot on the mattress. “Come here.”

Nyssa eyes Sara doubtfully.

“ _Come here,_ ” the blonde woman repeats more firmly. “I’m not gonna break if you touch me, and _you_ certainly look like you could use the comfort. Get up here for some cuddle time.”

Nyssa snorts. _Silly woman,_ she thinks.

But isn’t that how she fell in love with Sara in the first place?

Gingerly, tenderly, she climbs into the bed. Sara doesn’t hesitate to mould herself around Nyssa and start up the most mindless of chatters; it’s not Nyssa’s style, to hold a conversation about nothing in particular at all, but she cherishes it because it is exactly like the mornings Sara had termed Lazy Sundays—whether it had actually been a Sunday or not—that they had indulged in twice or thrice in another lifetime.

\-------------------------

She doesn’t realize it until later, but she falls asleep to the lull of a warm body in her arms and musical laughter in her ears.

Still, it doesn’t escape her notice that she did not once awaken to a nightmare.

* * *

Crossposted to: [Tumblr](http://anonymous033.tumblr.com/post/120316526162/rewritten-a-nysara-nyssara-one-shot-semi-au)


End file.
